Robot Claw – Page 51 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Postcards From Japan

February 23, 2025

All told I sent us 36 postcards from Japan, and the reason I’ve waited on this post is that six of them have yet to arrive. I haven’t given up hope since after my last trip a handful of cards took three months to find their way here but I don’t want to wait that long so let’s review a selection of the ones that have arrived today.

Fuji postcards are very common, and it’s extremely likely I’ve sent you one or more over the years. The image of the Shinkansen speeding in front of Fuji is iconic, and I’ve bought and sent many cards depicting this over the years. The bottom left card is one of several 1950s-era Japanese postcards I obtained at a postcard show last summer, and you’ll see several more of them in this post.

Geisha are iconically Japanese, but aren’t exactly common. And yet they still print postcards of them, which I usually buy since they’re colourful and pretty! We saw a geisha in the wild many years ago in Kyoto. She boarded a bus in full makeup and dress, and it was obvious she was a curio even for the locals. The leftmost card shows a ropeway in Hokkaido, and I should have saved it for a future trip…

The graphic Nagoya postcards were found at a post office, which was a relief since I’d had difficulty finding other postcards in that city. The one on the bottom right came from the zoo we visited, and the bottom left one was found packed with a VHS tape in my attic during a recent cleanout. It’s over 30 years old, very flimsy, and I’m surprised it survived the mail 🙂

Every day I sent us two cards, and as usual the messages were usually a general description of what we did that day on one, and some specific incident or event on the second (like what we ate or bought). This may seem mundane, but after doing this for almost two decades it’s fun going back and reading these tiny diaries.

The bottom left one came from the Alice in Wonderland shop in Nagoya with the tiny door we had to squat down to enter. It’s a lovely card and I should have bought more of their unique designs. Postcards are still very popular in Japan and it’s not hard to find good ones, which is why I was puzzled at the apparent lack in Nagoya.

These were purchased from a tiny store in Asakusa that sold mostly photos of celebrities from decades ago. This is a weird type of Japanese shop that doesn’t have a real western equivalent (maybe I’ll blog about one some time) but I was happy and surprised to see they had a small but incredible variety of (dated) pop culture cards as well!

I sent us two lenticular cards, and the Christmas one in the middle is one of them. Sent on Christmas Day, this described the fun we had shopping the otaku shopping district (Osu) in Nagoya. On the right is our new years card. I sent 14 new years cards on January 1, in four designs. Most depicted cute snakes, but as you can see ours didn’t 🙂

As I understand, you’re not technically allowed to mail shaped postcards in Japan. And yet they print them, and I’ve sent many over the years and they all arrive. Gotochi cards (special souvenir postcards sold at post offices) are shaped as well, and I’ve now sent myself two over the years and neither have arrived. I wonder what’s special about gotochi cards that prevent them from being mailed internationally? (The above card isn’t a gotochi, but was purchased from a popup shop showcasing work by the artist.)

Here’s the other lenticular I sent us. It’s massive: easily one of it not the largest card I’ve ever mailed. It’s more than twice as large as a normal postcard, and I put a bunch of extra postage on it just in case. I was very surprised it arrived, and it’s given me the idea of mailing an even bigger – as big as an A4 page! – Japanese lenticular card that I bought years ago.

As for the six that haven’t arrived, I don’t remember what they depicted or what I wrote on them. I number my cards so I can extrapolate when and where I sent them (Nagoya and Tokyo) but can’t speculate why they never arrived when others mailed the same day in the same mailbox did.

And as for the stamps, here are all the unique ones on the cards I mailed us:

Some good stamps here, but I discovered something interesting at the very tail end of the trip so I think the stamps I send from Japan next time will be a lot more interesting…

All these cards are now put into the big binder titled ‘Japan’, which is so full I think I need to start another. And if you’re wondering, yes I left space for the missing six 🙂

Gum Too

February 16, 2025

My interest in gum didn’t abate, so I went and bought some types currently on the market! Let’s see what I thought…

These gum balls cost $0.15 each at a local candy store. The first was just a standard bubblegum ball printed as a baseball, and was forgettable both in texture and taste. The second was coated with a sour chemical so strong and unpleasant I couldn’t leave it in my mouth for more than a few seconds, so I didn’t even get to evaluate the gum! The one at the bottom was ‘colour changing’ since the dye coloured your tongue. It worked fairly well, but the gumball was so incredibly rigid I gave up trying to bite it lest I broke a tooth. It felt like trying to bite a marble!

Razzles are candies that initially have the taste and feel of a plain sugar tab (like a PEZ) but after a short while turn into gum, possibly via some chemical reaction with saliva. They’re evil in taste and texture, and give me the distinct feeling I’m eating something not safe for humans. Strongly not recommended.

‘Dubble Bubble’ looks like a musk stick before you eat it, and initially feels too hard for gum. With some persistence (and jaw pain) you can chew it enough to release a strongly sweet flavour that, while acceptable, is fleeting. Bazooka – a timeless classic – is similar, and I doubt the formulation has changed in decades. And yes, if you look closely you’ll see Bazooka still comes with the little comics.

As you can see I bought many pieces just to see the comics, and in the seven I opened no comic repeated. I didn’t enter the code at the website; I wonder what happens when you do?

Moving onto a more traditional pack of gum, here’s original flavor Hubba Bubba ‘Max’. I bought this since I misunderstood the picture on the wrapper to suggest a fluid center, but as you can see it’s just a piece of gum with a different coloured piece in the middle. The taste was ok as a sugar delivery device, but I found the gum extremely rubbery and unpleasant to chew. I’d never eat this again.

Bubblicious was the brand we never had in Oz back in my youth, and for a time was one of the market leaders here. Foolishly I chose watermelon (from several options) but this just tasted of chemicals and nothing like any watermelon I’ve ever eaten. The gum had a strange powdery feel to it as well, but perhaps that was because I didn’t keep it in my mouth long enough for it to get elastic.

This Bubble Yum was the worst I tried by a wide margin. As everyone knows I like fairy floss, but this tasted nothing like it and a great deal like marshmallow to me. I found it repulsive, and spat it out in moments. The rest of these will go to my students 🙂

And so we end with this unusual find: Juicy Fruit bubblegum. To my surprise it was fairly good! In fact this tasted a lot more like my memory of Juicy Fruit than the gum I bought a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t as hard and rubbery as all the others in this post. I even blew a bubble! I’d never buy or eat it again, but I’d say this is the only one I found somewhat enjoyable 🙂

45+-Year-Old Star Wars Cards

February 9, 2025

The above pic shows the extent of my collection of the first series of Star Wars cards released by Topps back in 1977. As a child I had many more, but as I’ve mentioned on this blog before I glued them into a scrapbook 🙂

At the antique fair last year I purchased the above ‘repacks’ of vintage Star Wars cards. Here’s some of what was inside the one on the left:

In total the repack contained one sticker and 28 cards. They’re all original Topps cards, but they’re from the fifth series released in 1979! In Australia we only ever got one series of Star Wars cards, and had I known American kids saw five different sets on shelves all the way up the release of The Empire Strikes Back I would have been green with envy! I’m happy to have added these to my collection 🙂

Speaking of Empire, I still own my complete set of cards, which you can see above. These are in excellent condition since by that age (8, in 1980) I had stopped destroying my cards! As with Star Wars, Australia only had one set of Empire cards, but America had four, and the second repack I bought at the fair was from the third series:

There were 33 cards in the box, all different, and all in remarkably good condition considering they’re 45 years old. Again, I’m pleased to add them to my collection, but one in particular I was quite surprised to see.

The one on the left – which was also in the repack – is card #1 from the first Topps Empire set. On the right is my card #1 from my childhood set. I’ve circled the differences.

These are typically referred to as ‘Topps’ Star Wars cards today, but the truth is that Topps only sold them in the USA, and they were licensed and sold in other countries by different companies. In Australia it was a gum company named Scanlens, as you can see on the top left of the card shown above. I suspect this is the reason we only ever got one set for each film. Interestingly the Scanlens cards have a slight premium over the Topps ones, and a full set of Scanlens Empire cards in good condition can easily sell for over $100. The stickers are quite a bit rarer (I have most, but not all of them) and a Scanlens set can sell for several times the cost of the card set!

And what about Return Of The Jedi? Ive got a few dozen cards from the first Topps set, as well as about a half dozen unopened packs, including no-doubt rancid gum.

Should I open them?